The Sandy Hook Shooting "Conspiracy"

Ok, so recently some paranoid trolls on the internet, worried about their gun rights thanks to a presidential douchebag, started posting messages, blog articles, and youtube videos saying that the Sandy Hook shooting never happened and that it's all a big conspiracy to take away peoples guns.  Now I have no problem whatsoever with people owning guns.  I just have a problem with psychos with no seense of empathy for dead people and their family and friends owning guns.  Those are the ones I'm worried about.  If you don't feel for their families and just use the news of their deaths as a way to say the government is taking your gus, then you my friend, are a psychopath.  You have no feelings for your fellow man and woman and you don't deserve your guns, because you'll probably go shoot someone and not feel a thing.  I mean, if you don't feel for those families and are more afraid of losing your guns than you are worried about someone losing someone, then you have more feelings for your guns than the people you pretend to say you are protecting with those guns.

Where did these conspiracy theories come from?  Who wrote them?  Do you know them?  How credible are they?  So you have some minor evidence, but no proof?  I don't know you, but I'm supposed to believe you when you say that it's a conspiracy?  Ok, suppose I take your word for it.  Suppose I'm convinced by these tiny little supposed discrepencies that may or may not exist in your videos of the families.  I would look like the biggest most paranoid douchebag ever. 

And what if I believed that this story was true.  And I do.  It's on the news.  Can the news be bought?  Can they possibly be behind the spreading of a conspiracy?  How likely is that?  Ok first, yes money is a big motivator.  How much money would that take to convice that many people to report a lie?  Where would the money come from?  How much "acting" would it take to push this story as true?  You say some of them smiled in the news videos?  So what?  Any psychologist would tell you that a smile or even a little light laughter is normal from certain individuals.  Yeah, I know that's weird, but I've given a small smile during my biggest pains.  It's just a psychological reaction to get your through a big mess.  An extreme example would be someone that went mad with laughter, because they saw something miserable.  Most people, yes, would believe they thought it was funny, but not a psychologist or therapist.  They know more than most people do about the human mind.

So, there have been shootings in the past and at the same time there was talk of gun control.  I don't remember any conspiracy theories, do you?  Suddenly d-bag Obama wants to talk big gun control and people go nuts, so they use what they can including dead people to say "no."  Oh no.  Messages to the government that you're not happy about this.  Essays on why taking guns is a bad idea with references to credible people.  These aren't enough?  So instead you go all psycho and lose all empathy for the dead and their friends and family.  You go that far to say gus are a bad idea.  WOW!

That's minor compared to a huge controlled and well thought out conspiracy by the government.  Do you even know how unlikely that is?  I mean that's just way out there.  Why not go a step further to say the Obama is Osama Bin Laden's second cousin twice removed and that on top of that he was injected with alien dna from the planet Smoo.  That's about how unlikely that conspiracy theory is.

If you believe this is a conspiracy and not a reaction, then this is my response...

Was Asperger's to Blame for a Recent School Shooting?

It's been said on numerous and almost countless news sites.  The shooter had Asperger's Syndrome.  And repeatedly the same source posts article upon article that the shooter and his Asperger's were not related.  I normally don't even feel the need to bold face or underline things, but since people need to be reminded time and time again that they aren't related, I felt the need to.  I could probably even justify myself if I highlighted them, circled them, and pointed arrows at them.  Instead let me point out perhaps 3 sources that you could read before I carry this any further.

Leave autism out of mass shootings (CNN) by Alex Plank

Is autism a link to violence (NBC News) by staff, KSBY News

No Link Between Asperger's Syndrome And Violence, Experts Say (Huffington Post) STEPHANIE NANO

Ok, so I hope you at least read one of those and have a clear enough picture, if you didn't before.  People with Asperger's syndrome have problems with social queues.  They have problems showing empathy.  And yes sometimes they do reactively lash out.  They typically do not strike back with plans thought of ahead of time.  Not to say that 1 out of 1 million won't.  It's just very unlikely.  As a matter of fact, someone with no problems with psychological or in this case neurological background is more likely to do such a thing.  I said it in a previous post that anybody could do something this horrible.

So, you might ask about the lack of empathy shown by autistics.  Well, certainly they don't show it much, but the thing with autism is that a person with autism quite often feels more than what they show.  It's a type of communication that they have a problem showing.  It may not feel normal to them to express it.  It may not feel comfortable for them to show it.

As for me, it is very hard to show my emotions.  However when they do they, come pouring out all at once.  Sometimes in tears, by myself or in front of people.

But they lash out reactively.  Yes, unfortunately many of us do or have in the past.  This is more typically in our younger years.  When we get older we learn how to manage our impulses.  Those that react, react out of fear and pain.  There's always a reason for it, whether necessary or not.  The ones that do might hit someone or push someone.  That's about the extent of it.  Later, we learn not to do that as we grow up.  Still there are temper problems even into our adult hood.  Many have learned to manage this as well.

As for me, growing up I have hit or shoved people in my younger years and mostly in my youngest years.  My impulse to hit a bully turned into hitting solid objects.  I have hurt and somewhat skinned my knuckles on walls, in the past.  Yelling?  Yeah, I have yelled in the past, too.  This is still an on going thing, but it's exceedingly rare for me to be in a situation where I feel enough of or the right kind of pain to yell.  Ok, I yell at my video games, but who hasn't?  They're out there.  Show of hands.  :)  The last time I yelled I was in a room with people I knew well enough.  The first and main ingredient is something to be be outraged about.  So if I feel someone did or said something that I'm completely outraged by then that's the number one ingredient.  That's not all.  Without the rest of these ingredients I will not lose my temper.  It must be a room where I feel no very easy way out of.  I must know many of the people in the room well enough otherwise I'm more apt to walk out or cry.  No open spaces.  I'm more likely to walk away, if someone displeases me at Wal-mart.  Not many strangers.  People are scary.  I don't know what to expect.  So to summarize it must be in a place I normally feel comfortable in or rather be very familiar with and that goes for the people, too.

Another thing about Aspergers is that people that have it follow a certain moral code.  Many people have their own, but typically follow what our teachers brought us up with.  We're more likely to follow the law when we can at all help it.  We don't like to stand out.  I don't speak for all autistics or aspies when I say the following.  When I was growing up and even some now, I'm more likely to socialize or get some understanding from people older than me.  I was more able to be myself around authority figures or those that are in a position to help me with services or jobs.

So is it any wonder why we sometimes do get mad and show it?  After all, we're typically the victims of bullies of any form.  We're the ones that don't seem to fit in.  We're the ones that are lonely.  So to add to that, now we're being stigmatized by people that read one story on a shooting and now believe there's a correlation, because the media messed up and later admitted it.  But many people read the one story and stick to that.  They don't care what is said later.  They think they have all the information.  The media can't apologize enough, but to be gracious for their apologetic efforts in fixing that, I can only forgive them.  But I'll have a harder time with those ignoring the press's later statements that violence like the shooting and Asperger's is not related.  Those people I have little sympathy for, because they don't often use their heads.  I make no apologies for what I'm saying to any of those that believe in a non-existent correlation.

All Crimes Are Committed By Someone Mentally Ill?

First off, no.  Actually most crimes are committed people that are completely sane by medical standards.  Ok, now that we've got my main point let's get to it.  I miss the old days when crimes were committed by psychos and psychopaths as people called them.  Crazies.  There wasn't anything specific to people's rationale as to why someone did something.  It's just like pointing out that there was just simply something wrong with the person and it's true isn't it?  A poor person needs money to pay a bill.  Well, he has a gun.  He can hold up the local store clerk and in the process, oops, kill him.  Was their something wrong with the person.  Of course, but the person can be perfectly normal.  All he needed was a big motivator.  Maybe his heat was being shut off this winter.  And you know people can't go without heat.  Many people can't stand that.  So there's his motivator.  We don't usually see why a person does what they do.  Often times the crimes are simple and for simple reasons.

Now we have school shootings.  This is a more complex situation.  Lately the one thing that's been trending in the news in so many shootings or other crimes is "this person has asperger's."  Not sure where this has come from entirely.  I suspect since the term is a trending topic as of late and people are learning more about it, it's on people's minds.  Now people really don't understand what asperger's is all about.  They know the basics of it.  A couple things that stand out are the awkward behaviors and the other is the lack of show of emotion.  Well, rest assured, as we, like every normal person is, that although we are capable of it, the likeliness that we would do such a thing is generally the same as all normal people.  Just like the guy that shot up a store clerk for his gas bill I mentioned earlier.

The apparent lack of emotion is the big indicator for people.  "He's not showing any emotion  He must have asperger's," is probably what people are thinking.  Well, actually when someone commits a crime that big, they often lock their emotions away in their head.  Seems to be a normal thing to do for some people, really.  Try to hide their guilt, so they hide emotion in the process of hiding their guilty look.

But school shootings are complex situations.  There's a lot we don't know.  There's a lot that we don't see.  There's a lot we can assume.  We try to rationalize people's behavior now.  It obviously doesn't make it right, but we're all looking for a reason.  We're all looking and asking why.

In the end though, we have someone that did something.  We can't stop it.  We can't read minds.  As much as we like to think we have control, we don't.  We like to think we can take care of these things.  We all want that power.  But we simply can't do that.  All we can do is deal with it when it comes and pray for those lost and those hurt.

Live like nothing can go wrong.  Love like nothing can stop you.  You never know when the unexpected may happen.  Don't live worrying about it.  Don't try too hard to rationalize it.  If it's not in your best interest, then just leave it be and bandage and pray for those left behind.

The Copyright Debate

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My take on the whole copyright deal.  I couldn't get everything in this video that I wanted, but I got the just of it.

New laws needs to be made and negotiations between people on the sides of fans and people against the "infringement" need to take place.

The internet is like this...  Say you're on the street and you get to talking to someone new and suddenly you get on the topic of "Family guy" and you just happened to buy the episode and put it on your phone.  So you talk about "Family Guy" and you show him part of the episode from your phone.  Now imagine this taking place on the internet.  The internet has a different feel to it.  When you click a link to a copyrighted video, it's like bumping into someone on the street happening upon someone with the same taste and thinking it's funny.  The thing I'm saying that we should start seeing the internet this way.  The internet just has a different feel to it than real life.  Copyright is no different in or out of the internet, but it is being treated VERY differently.  We need to make it clear that real life is a very different beast than the internet, but we should treat it the same way we do real life.  The thing is is that the internet is crystal clear and you see everything.  You see things happening that you don't see in real life so clearly.  With the internet, it's right there in front of your face and at your fingertips.

The Problem With Horror Movies Lately

I see so many problems with horror movies today.  I'm a big fan of these films, but the biggest problem is that they aren't scary.  They try to explain off everything as to what's happening and why it happens and blah blah.  Come on folks, leave us some mystery.  Leave us something to the imagination.  Don't show the bad guy.  That's one way to scare.  Paranormal Activity did a great job leaving things to your imagination.  That movie scared me.

The found footage type films are quite possibly the scariest most eerie things to me.  I mean, you can't see a demon.  You see all this weir activity.  It's all subtle, except for PA 3, which wasn't so subtle.  I've kinda lost faith in Paranormal Activity since the 3rd one, because of that.  I'll probably watch 4, anyway, though.

And the monsters aren't freaky enough to me, if they do show them.  If you want to show something scary, you might as well go all out and hire some crazy artists.  There is plenty of crazy looking artwork out there on the internet.  These people may even be waiting to be hired for this reason alone.  Hire them to desire some scary monsters.

I'd also like to see a move to more practical  special effects instead of doing so many things in CG animation.  CG doesn't look tangible.  It's like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, trying to put in something that so far away from looking real, that it's laughable and you can't take it seriously.  I'd really wish they'd go with 80s special effects and I'm sure by now that those type of effects could more easily look better in today's movies than in the 80s.  At least those creatures looked like they were really there.

G4 goes GQ and "Attack of the Show" Is Cancelled

When I heard that G4 got bought and that it was gonna go all GQ like, geeks everywhere cried "Oh, hell no!"  And we all have something to complain about.  Where the hell do they get off knowing what people want?  If they knew what people wanted, they'd do it better and keep the target audience.  Alas "Attack of the Show" and "X-Play" are cancelled and will be living out the last two months of their lives.

Now I'd rather not get graphic with my language on this blog, but I really feel the need to say it like it feels to me.  "Attack of the Show" is the only show of it's kind on tv.  Geek media, video games, and tech with a good ounce of geek humor.  That's what I like.  But this news of it's cancelation is like being told I have 2 months to prepare for a horde of zombies bent on raping and molesting me before they devour my flesh.  It feels like a straight shot to the crotch, along with a good old slap to the face.  I am appalled that the geek population is now thought so little of on tv all over again!  Where on tv is there even a source for all things geek?  "Attack of the Show" was that show!  There is no other show like it on tv.

Everyone, it's time to say "I am a geek!  And I want my shows back!"

Job Update 2...

Ok, after keeping up a great positive attitude so far and feeling great about it, I had to face reality.  They were holding my hand the rest of the way.  I was fowling up.  I started to get nervous.  And I had to quit.  The job was too unpredictable for me.  I thrive in an environment where I know just what to do next and when customers call in all the time, they always give me something that is hard for me to react to.  No, I never got rude, nor was it necessary.  It's not their fault.  I didn't have any rude customers to be honest.  It was just not easy, actually down right hard to keep up with things when they don't know what they want exactly or if they want anything.  I am the one kind of person that if I constantly am asked to do tasks where I am frantically trying to figure out what to do next, I can't handle it or do it.  If you want to rely on me for something, it must be something I know the immediate answer to.  That's how an aspie like me works.  So it was hard to face this reality, but I had to.  I hung in there and did what I could, but once I saw what I was really like in this situation, I knew it wasn't right for me.  But hey, I made a sale.  One commission.  And I tried.  :)